Sharpes Siege   ::   Корнуэлл Бернард

The Royal Navy had reached its apogee ofpopularity with Nelson (a fact that aroused envy in the Army, which was cordially disliked by most British people), but it was a popularity not shared by most of the Royal Navy’s own seamen who endured vile conditions, low pay and, unless they were fortunate in their ship’s captain, frequent and brutal physical punishment. One of the easiest escapes from such a regime was to an American ship where the men were assured of instant citizenship. Their fear of the punishment that awaited them, should they be recaptured, helped make such deserters into superb fighters. Cornelius Killick would doubtless have numbered such men in his crew.

That an American should rescue Sharpe is not so fanciful. Colquhoun Grant, whose real-life adventures have previously contributed to Sharpe’s career, was rescued while a fugitive prisoner in Nantes by an American ship’s captain who ignored the fact that Grant was his country’s enemy. Blood and language, it seems, were often thicker than formal alliances. That, however, would not have prevented an American privateer’s crew from being strung from the yard-arm by the Royal Navy, especially as the Navy had been piqued by American successes afloat.

Those successes had been gained in the War of 1812, a quite pointless conflict between Britain and America. Afloat, the Americans inflicted a stinging series of defeats on the Royal Navy, only to lose the final frigate battle, while ashore the course of the war was similar, but reversed; with Britain easily defeating the American attempts to invade Canada, capturing and burning Washington, but then losing the final battle at New Orleans. The causes of the conflict had been resolved before war was declared, and its final battle was fought after the peace had been signed. Sharpe is indeed fortunate to be denied any part of the nonsense by Cornelius Killick.

The chasse-marees existed, and were hired for the purpose of making the bridge over the Adour. The French made no effective resistance to that bridge, and the action on the northern bank was distinguished chiefly by the employment of the erratic Rocket Artillery (fully described in Sharpe’s Enemy) in one of its rare appearances on Wellington’s battlefields.

Wellington went no further north on the Biscay coast; instead he turned eastwards and marched on Toulouse. Throughout the campaign his men were met with the white cockade and there was no resistance movement in France like that which bedevilled Napoleon’s armies in occupied Spain.